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Penn & Teller: Bullshit — Intelligent Design

Penn & Teller debunk Intelligent Design as a possible scientific theory, even while it is being added to science curricula across the U.S.

This program originally aired back in March of 2003, and Cobb County’s “intelligent design” policies were stricken down by a federal judge in Atlanta as unconstitutional in 2005.

But, scientifically speaking, creation is not a theory. It’s not even a hypothesis. It can’t be disproven. Hell, I’m not sure it can even be tested. Evolution was a hypothesis. Supporting evidence was gathered and it became a theory. For nearly 150 years it’s been tested and has not been disproven. Sure we’ve made adjustments and corrections, but the core concept remains.

Evolution will never advance beyond a theory in science, because it’s impossible to prove. That’s how the scientific process works. The more we fail to disprove a theory, the more likely its accuracy. People are free to believe in creation, but it can’t be a scientific theory because you can’t devise an experiment to disprove it. It cannot be tested. This makes it useless, whether true or false. Evolution theory can be used to make predictions and advances. So long as those predictions and advances hold up, the truth of the theory is actually fairly irrelevant, though it is obviously strengthened each time it is successfully used.

It’s always possible that something will come along and throw a wrench in our ideas on evolution and we’ll need to *ahem* evolve new ways of thinking.

What I don’t think ID/Creationism proponents ever really contemplate is this… Do you believe in survival of the fittest? Do you believe that an animal that is better suited to its life and environment will produce more successfully/frequently than one that is less well suited? To me, that’s just simple logic and observation. Of course it will. It’s no different than the best college basketball team making it through March madness and taking the NCAA championship. Yes, in any given season the best team might have a bad game at a bad time, but on average over the course of years, the best teams come out on top.

Now if you’ve accepted that, the logical next step is that those animals with advantages will pass those advantages on, and over time that can shift the attributes of the species.

We see evolution happen all the time, but opponents choose to ignore it. New strains of influenza pop up every year, for example.